...and finally it pays off for OSNews to have a Dutch editor. Yes, I knew this glorious day would one day be upon us, the day upon which the rest of the technology world would be struggling with Google Translate to decipher a Dutch article with news in it. But not for OSNews, oh no! Anyway, Steve Wozniak, Apple founder and still technically an employee, gave an interview to a Dutch newspaper (the worst we have, but still) in which he made some interesting remarks. Update: Told you it's the worst newspaper we have.

That's like saying that iOS interface is a clone of Symbian - have you ever had a modern Android device? The interface is different. Obviously, both being touch enabled small form factor devices, they share a number of common things. Tap an icon to launch an application. Change homescreens via swiping the screen - there aren't that many ways to do that. Similarly, once you launch the drawer, you scroll up and down via swiping on the screen, another example for sth that can't be done in too many ways. But my Nexus One interface UI has very little in common with an iPhone.

For starts, I mostly have widgets on my main homescreen, last I checked, iOS has no widget support. I have icons of the apps I use the most on the screen to the left, more widgets with different functionalities on the right. App switching is different, the scroll-down status bar (with added functionalities in cyanogenmod like quickly switching wifi, data, 2g/3g, etc.) is something the iPhone does not have. Folders, were recently added to iOS, Android had them for a while.

Anyway, the point is, that the android=iOS clone is a tired meme, and it's bullshit. One thing that sets them apart is that Android is far more configurable. Some vendors (Samsung comes to mind) chose to imitate the iOS look and feel, others have their own thing (HTC Sense is a fine example, had functionalities/features way before they were added to iOS - I had a HTC Touch HD with Sense UI previously, and that's a two year old model). Vanilla Android will look and work the way you want it to. I guess with some work you can get it to work similarly to the iOS interface, but that's a far cry from being a clone.